Just the kind of thing an ad geek/life chronicler such as myself wishes I’d thought of. Amazing that consumer culture has advanced to the point where we can communicate the events of our day using only brand logos. Each logo conveys not just a specific activity, but also psychographic details about the personality and socioeconomic class of their user. Very cool.
Several weeks ago I heard a radio spot for a place called Golden Moon Hotel & Casino. It consisted of a conversation between two men discussing their plans to visit said casino, using expressions that reeked of douchebagginess (sample line of dialog: “Blonde, brunette, it doesn’t matter!”). Their conversation made me, as a copywriter, a man, and a human being, want to drive my car into a wall. They sounded like parodies of douchebags, only they were completely serious. The phrase that made me wince most, however, was “You know,” said by both characters with different intonation. It seemed like the copywriters were desperately trying to hint at debauchery, but couldn’t figure out some creative way to do so. Little did I know these two empty words were the crux of Golden Moon’s advertising strategy.
Last week the casino rolled out print ads and billboards featuring the abominable phrase, along with a picture of a semi-attractive woman emerging from a swimming pool. Beneath the photo, the despised words. WHAT DO THEY MEAN? What am I alleged to know? Because I most certainly DO NOT KNOW.
The second ad is equally awful, but for altogether different reasons. The headline makes no sense, unless you understand the pun on “moon.” It is also set lazily in all caps with a pointless drop shadow. The body copy is full of empty words and clichéd phrases. Then there’s the mammoth (boring) logo. Complete ad fail.
Golden Moon Hotel & Casino, I’m sorry, but I hate you.
Honda turned a stretch of road in California into a musical instrument. By arranging grooves on the road in a certain order and pattern, the team created a road that played the William Tell Overture as cars drove over it. Neighbors complained soon enough about the noise, but the publicity from this singular, unexpected stunt surely makes up for it
This is kind of old (it won a 2008 One Show Pencil), but I’m posting it anyway. An agency called Papercut in Sweden developed a fantastic digital campaign for Doritos that breaks through all the proverbial clutter—in fact, it does away with it altogether. By downloading an application to their desktops, users are able to replace the ads on a given webpage with whatever content they want.
More recently, Doritos unveiled a microsite called Hotel 626 (by Goodby) that lets visitors explore 13 rooms of a haunted hotel and solve Myst-style puzzles and challenges. What’s more, it’s only open from 6pm-6am EST, to ensure people experience it in the proper mood.
Recently I’ve enjoyed two very different sites online:
Durchzug.info is a collection of hundreds of German/Swiss/Austrian Bahn (train) announcements. As a Europhile and someone who is eager to return to the land of pretzels and beer houses, I loved how easy it was to close my eyes and imagine myself pulling up to Berlin Hauptbahnhof. Whoever put all the time and effort into compiling this collection, thank you!
This site is much more well known. Sponsored by Burger King (and produced by the bete noire of advertising, CPB), Whopper Sacrifice is a Facebook application with a simple premise: defriend 10 of your “friends,” and get a coupon for a free Whopper. It’s funny, it’s viral, and it’s a great use of social networks.
#burgerking #cpb #germany #trains #advertising #crispinporter
/04:31 AM
I caught this commercial during The Office tonight, and was quite turned off by the message it seemed to send. The spot shows a bunch of children emerging from their school, only to be confronted by an endless line of champagne-colored Lexus SUVs. “Identity theft affects everyone,” the spot says. The confusing copy notwithstanding, I find the premise of the spot completely unappealing. True, Lexus RX300 SUVs are quite popular among a certain upper middle class demographic. But to market the Audi Q5 solely to snobby private school parents seems pretentious at best and offensive at worst.
It reminded me of another Audi commercial, below, that I also found in bad taste. This one shows a house changing through time, and ends with the tag “Progress is Beautiful,” implying that antiques and retro design are not beautiful. I, as well as many interior designers and style mavens would have to disagree.
Though I dislike Audi advertising, I do very much like the headlights on the new A4. Very very cool. 
Quite possibly one of the oddest success stories in advertising, the epileptic banner ad continues to be a mainstay in online campaigns for various mundane services, such as car insurance and mortgage companies. Its first, and most famous, incarnation was the dancing silhouettes used by LowerMyBills.com that were virtually ubiquitous (pun intended) for several years. Recently a smaller, yet no less optically painful example of this form of advertising has popped up on weather.com. If you haven’t seen it, it shows two women gyrating jerkily, a telltale sign of an animated GIF file. One of the women, dressed in Midwest-modest attire, shakes her rear enthusiastically, as if dancing to some unheard bass-heavy beat. The other woman, smiling, does a lame “raise-the-roof” motion. Somehow this combination is supposed to incite me to check my car insurance. Huh? Someone please end this abomination of advertising.
Marshalls is not a brand I typically consider hip or web-savvy, but their newest promotion shows that someone there gets it. To promote The Cube, a new mini-boutique for girls within some Marshalls stores, the company is using as its spokesperson someone who is neither female nor even real.
Kelly, a character created by comedian Liam Sullivan, is the star of many YouTube videos, most notably “Shoes,” which is one of the most quoted viral videos among teens. The latest one takes place primarily in a Marshalls store, but the viewer is not hit over the head with the brand; in fact, only by reading the details of the video did I figure out the sponsorship.
This campaign is remarkable for several reasons. One, it shows companies are willing to take risks by using “internet celebrities” as spokespeople. Two, it shows they are willing to take this step in spite of vulgar language and possibly controversial imagery in the Kelly videos. Three, it shows a fantastic integration of social media and real world applications.
It’s awesome to see boring brands taking risks like this, and exciting to see where advertising is heading.
#youtube #kelly #advertising #liamsullivan #shoes #marshalls
/03:32 PM
Didn’t mean to hate on Coke in two posts in a row, but that’s how fate would have it. (It also seems critiquing bus shelter advertising is becoming a trend for me…can’t wait to do the medium some justice when I get out in the real world!)
Anyway, today’s unfortunate example is currently running in Atlanta, and presumably across the country, to support Coke’s Secret Formula campaign. Having worked on a piece of the campaign myself I can attest to the fact that the campaign has potential to be fun and interesting.
Wieden+Kennedy, one of the world’s leading creative shops, was behind the original idea, though I can’t be sure they oversaw the production of this piece in particular. The iffy art direction notwithstanding, the headline of this ad is atrocious. It is tautologous nonsense, and adds absolutely zero to the big idea. Just because the ads are supposed to look amateur doesn’t mean the writing should be.
